1941 - Political Events

Political Events

World War II explodes into a global conflict as German troops invade Soviet Russia and Japanese forces attack Pearl Harbor (see below).

President Roosevelt recommends a Lend-Lease program to aid the Allies in a January 6 congressional message that defies widespread isolationist sentiment. The $17.5 billion budget submitted to Congress by the president January 8 includes nearly $11 billion for national defense. The United States has been producing 25,000 planes per year but needs far more; Congress authorizes $7 billion in Lend-Lease aid March 27.

British Commonwealth troops capture Bardia from Italian forces in Libya January 5 (see 1940). They advance westward through Libya, capturing Tobruk January 22, Derna January 30, and Benghazi February 7 and taking more than 125,000 Italians prisoner, including at least six generals. The Germans rush their newly organized Afrika Korps to North Africa under the command of Gen. Erwin Rommel, whose advance guard arrives at Tripoli February 14. The last Italian troops are driven out of Sudan February 16, and the Italian-held port of Mogadishu in Somaliland falls February 25 to a British army under the command of Dublin-born Gen. Alan G. (Gordon) Cunningham, 53; Ethiopian troops take Burye March 6, Allied troops take the Eritrean capital Asmara April 1 (see 1936), and Gen. Cunningham occupies Addis Ababa April 6 as Italian resistance collapses. The main Italian armies under Amadeo di Savoia, duke d'Aosta, surrender at Amba Alagi May 20, and the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie is able to return from exile. Ethiopia regains her independence in December (see 1936). British troops help oust Italian occupation forces and restore Haile Selassie to power.

The Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean in March ends in defeat for the Italian Navy, which loses some 3,000 men. Armed with information supplied by the code-breakers of Bletchley Park, Royal Navy and Australian Navy forces under the command of Andrew B. Cunningham (whose brother Allan commands British ground forces in Ethiopia) employ an elaborate ruse to keep the enemy from knowing that the British have broken the Enigma code.

Gen. Rommel prepares to launch counterattacks in Libya, and the British evacuate Benghazi April 3 as Rommel's Afrika Korps advances. Gen. Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, 57, arrives from India in July to succeed Gen. Wavell as commander of the now depleted 8th Army, Gen. Cunningham goes to Egypt in August to work with him, and they launch a counteroffensive in the Libyan Desert November 18 (see 1942).

Yugoslavia joins the Axis March 25 under pressure from Berlin and a revolution begins March 27; Hungary's premier Gróf Pál Teleki commits suicide at his native Budapest April 3 at age 61, having cooperated with the Germans last year by negotiating a treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia (he is succeeded by László Bárdossy, who will deepen ties with Nazi Germany but serve for less than a year). German troops invade Yugoslavia April 6, Croats support them, and hundreds of thousands of Serbs are killed, mostly by Croatian irregulars. The Germans take over the Kosovo mines that yielded silver in Roman times and whose sprawling British-built works produce silver, lead, cadmium, gold, and zinc for German war plants. The Germans set up Ante Pavelic, now 51, as poglavnik (führer), his Ustase regime adopts the slogan "Ready for the Fatherland" ("Za dom Spremni") and searches out Jews and Orthodox Serbs for brutal treatment, but Yugoslav communists help Enver Hoxha set up the Albanian Communist Party, which will later become the Party of Labor (see 1942).

German troops invade Greece April 6. The nation's dictator Ioannis Metaxas has died at Athens January 29 at age 69 after a repressive reign that began in August 1936, but his efforts to reorganize the nation economically and militarily have enabled Greece to resist her Italian invaders. Prime Minister Churchill orders some British 8th Army units from North Africa to come to the aid of the Greeks, whose king George II flees to Crete, then to Alexandria, and later to London.

The America First Committee founded in April unites isolationists under the leadership of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick and Sears, Roebuck chairman Robert E. Wood, who are joined by Charles A. Lindbergh, Senators Borah, Byrd, Wheeler, and others (see 1940).

Japan's foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka flies to Moscow and signs a non-aggression treaty with Josef Stalin April 14 (but see 1945). Admiral Soemu Toyoda, 56, replaces Matsuoka as foreign minister in July, and Prince Fumimaro Konoye resigns his premiership in October, having failed to reach an agreement with the United States. He is succeeded October 16 by Gen. Hideki Tojo, now 56, who appoints Kyushu-born diplomat Shigenori Togo, 59, foreign minister. A member of a rich family, Togo married a German woman while working at Japan's Berlin embassy in 1920 and has served as ambassador to Nazi Germany and to the Soviet Union (see 1942).

Hitler aide Rudolf Hess flies a modified Messerschmidt 110 from Augsburg to Scotland May 10 with a view to discussing peace terms and joint opposition to the Bolshevism of Josef Stalin's Soviet Union. Dodging anti-aircraft fire, he parachutes onto a field 12 miles from Dongeval Castle, home of London-born nobleman Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 37, 14th duke of Hamilton; identifying himself at first as Hauptmann Alfred Horn, he asks to see the duke and then admits that he is Rudolf Hess. The British intern him, the Gestapo imprisons his adjutants and secretaries, but Hitler protects Hess's family and sends a personal telegram of condolence to his mother after his father dies in October (see 1946).

London goes up in flames again May 10 in the worst German incendiary attack on the city since December (see 1940); more than 3,000 people are killed, the House of Commons is destroyed, but St. Paul's Cathedral survives and once again no German invasion materializes; Hitler has sent his Lüftwaffe on the short, 8½-minute flight across the Channel to terrorize London in order to mask his preparations for an invasion to the East, but he loses about 2,375 planes to anti-aircraft fire and Royal Air Force fighters before the raids are halted. President Roosevelt has appointed former Social Security Board chairman John G. Winant to succeed millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy as ambassador to the Court of St. James in February, and Winant walks the streets of London, endearing himself to the citizens by offering help to the injured amid the rubble of bombed-out houses.

Some 16,000 German paratroopers invade Crete May 20 in the world's first large-scale aerial assault, but the Germans sustain so many casualties that Hitler will never again try to land an invasion force that way. British Commonwealth troops under the command of Gen. Bernard C. Freyberg, now 52, try to hold on to the island as a naval base but withdraw 12 days later, evacuating 17,000 men safely while leaving many dead and more than 10,000 who are taken as prisoners of war.

The German battleships D.K.M. Scharnhorst and D.K.M. Gneisenau put in at Brest March 22 after operating for 2 months in the North Atlantic, sinking several ships, and threatening British supply lines (see 1940). Repeated air attacks will keep them in port for the rest of the year (see 1942).

The 41,700-ton German battleship D.K.M. Bismarck sails out of Gdynia, Poland, May 18, the 21-year-old, 42,000-ton British battle cruiser H.M.S. Hood fires on her at 5:52 in the morning of May 24. Bismarck responds 2 minutes later with 38-centimeter shells that wreak havoc; Hood breaks in two and goes down in less than 10 minutes with all but three of her 1,400 men and officers, but Bismarck goes down 600 miles off the French coast May 27 after being spotted by a Catalina flying boat out of Ireland. The Germans will claim that she was scuttled, the British that a lucky shot from a carrier-based torpedo plane hit Bismarck's rudder, crippling the huge battlewagon, and the British destroyer Sikh commanded by Graham H. Stokes, 38, is credited with firing the torpedoes that did the job. Only 100 members of Bismarck's 1,300-man crew survive.

German U-boats continue to prey on merchant ships in the North Atlantic (see 1940). Admiral Karl Doenitz's wolf packs easily evade depth charges, which are ineffective against submarines that have descended more than 25 feet, and a U-boat can remain submerged for up to 18 hours (see 1942).

The Royal Air Force begins flying B-24 (Liberator) long-range heavy bombers that were introduced 2 years ago by Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft. A high-level bomber with a range of 1,590 miles, it has a maximum speed of 295 miles per hour and a ceiling of 28,000 feet; its wings span 110 feet and contain 18 separate, self-sealing fuel tanks. It normally carries a crew, and it has a retractable tricycle landing gear. Its bomb bay can hold four 2,000-pound bombs, and a 4,000-pound bomb can be mounted beneath each wing. Consolidated-Vultee will produce 10,000 B-24s in the next few years, and three other companies (Ford Motor, Douglas Aircraft, and North American Aviation) will produce another 9,000 (see 1943).

British forces arrive in Iraq May 31 and foil an attempt by Axis sympathizers to take over the government and obtain oil for the German war machine (see 1939). Former premier Rashid Ali al-Gailani, 47, has led a pro-Nazi coup and is sent into exile (see Arab League, 1945).

British and Free French troops invade Syria and Lebanon in early June to prevent a German takeover of those countries. Lebanese independence is proclaimed November 26 (see 1943).

Jewish terrorists in Palestine use violence to fight for independence from Britain (see 1939). The Stern Gang founded by Polish-born underground leader Abraham Stern, 34, assassinates officials, it bombs military installations and oil refineries, and although the British will kill Stern next year, his followers will continue the struggle (see 1945).

German troops invade Soviet Russia at dawn June 22 under the command of Gen. Karl Rudolf von Rundstedt, 65, and Gen. Heinrich Alfred Walther von Brauchitsch, 59, in Operation Barbarossa. The German high command had intended to launch the invasion in early May; British action in the Balkans has diverted German resources to the south, and the delay will prove catastrophic. Shrugging off the advice of his generals and dismissing the objections of Karl Haushofer, Adolf Hitler throws close to 90 percent of his Wehrmacht into the offensive on the eastern front, but Josef Stalin, stunned, gives no immediate orders to return fire, refusing for 8 hours to believe that his "ally" has betrayed him (see 1939). Bombers destroy 1,200 Soviet planes—800 of them on the ground—within 9 hours, and more than 3 million Germans, Finns, Hungarians, and Romanians, equipped with 3,350 tanks and 7,184 pieces of artillery, advance at the rate of 50 miles per day beyond a 1,800-mile frontier from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea against an unprepared Soviet army, most of whose leaders have been liquidated in Stalin's political purges of the late 1930s. More than a million Soviet troops are quickly killed or taken prisoner. Ukrainian villagers welcome the invaders in many cases as liberators; they soon find that the Germans are more brutal in their treatment of civilians on the eastern front than in the West.

Boer War hero (and Boy Scouts founder) Lord Robert Baden-Powell dies at Nyeri, Kenya, January 8 at age 83; former Spanish king Alfonso XIII in exile at Rome February 28 at age 64; German Nobel pacifist Ludwig Quidde in exile at Geneva March 5 at age 82; former German kaiser Wilhelm II of an intestinal ailment and a pulmonary edema in exile at Doorn in the Netherlands June 4 at age 82; former Polish president (and pianist) Ignace Jan Paderewski after a 4-day illness in his New York hotel suite June 29 at age 80.

British and Soviet diplomats sign a mutual assistance treaty at London July 13, but British intelligence predicts a Soviet collapse within weeks; U.S. intelligence says 3 months.

The twin-engined DH-98 Mosquito introduced by De Havilland Aircraft Co. has a wooden frame and a plywood skin (see 1920). Designed by Geoffrey de Havilland in 1938 and produced in Australia and Canada as well as in England, the mid-wing two-seater is glued and screwed together, has a top speed of more than 400 miles per hour (faster than any other plane on either side of the conflict), and will prove to have a range of more than 1,500 miles carrying a two-ton bomb load. Adapted for service as a night fighter, the Mosquito will be credited with downing more than 600 Lüftwaffe planes over Germany, and 7,780 of the planes will be built for use as bombers, fighters, high-altitude fighters, night fighters, and photo-reconnaissance purposes (see commercial jet, 1949).

Link Aeronautical Corp. produces trainers that will be used until 1945 to teach an estimated 500,000 pilots (see 1934). Link factories at Binghamton and Gananoque, Ont., will soon have 1,500 workers turning out 80 trainers per week.

The Atlantic Charter comes out of secret meetings held off the coast of Newfoundland from August 9 to 12 by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. Drafted by Alexander (George Montague) Cadogan, 56, the charter contains eight articles of agreement on war aims. The president's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, dies at Hyde Park, N.Y., September 7 at age 87, and he wears a black armband to express his grief.

Brig. Gen. Adna Romanza Chaffee Jr. is promoted to major general in early August but dies at Boston August 22 at age 56. He has led efforts to develop an armored force, but the U.S. Cavalry remains largely a horse-mounted unit based at Fort Riley, Kansas. Large-scale tank production will not begin until next year.

The U.S. Army's Ordnance Department works with arms makers to develop a lightweight, fully automatic rifle capable of firing a 110-grain bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet per second (see Garand, 1934); it receives nine prototype rifles May 1, one has been submitted by John Garand, and none passes the army's tests. The Army drops its requirement that the weapon be fully automatic, begins a new round of tests September 15, and at the end of the month adopts a Winchester Arms rifle designed by David Marshall Williams, 40, who worked out the details of his mechanism for the new .30-caliber M1 carbine while serving time for murder (he killed a policeman who raided his illegal still in 1921 but was paroled in 1929).

British and Soviet troops invade Iran in late August. Reza Shah Pahlevi abdicates September 16 after a 16-year reign in which he has broken the power of the tribes, built the Trans-Iranian Railway, emancipated women (see 1935), and built roads, schools, and hospitals, and opened the nation's first university. He is succeeded by his son Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, 21, who is more inclined to cooperate with the Allies.

Tallin, Estonia, falls to the Germans August 29, German soldiers lay siege to Leningrad in September, they take Kiev September 19, sustaining heavy losses but defeating and trapping a 500,000-man Soviet army commanded by Marshal Simon Mikhailovich Budenny, 58; Kiev's city center is destroyed by a fire that has probably been started by Partisans or by the Soviet secret police as part of a rear-guard action that leaves 25,000 homeless. By October the Germans control an area more than twice the size of France, but they carry no winter clothing, the temperature falls to -40° F., fresh Soviet troops arrive from the Urals and Siberia, and Marshal Konstantin Konstaninovich Rokossovsky, 44, drives the Germans away from Moscow after they have reached a point only 25 miles from the Kremlin. Longtime Stalin friend Marshal Klimenti Efremovich Voroshilov, 60, has worked to modernize the Red Army, which launches a counterattack at Leningrad October 2, Stalin declares a state of siege October 20, and Hitler removes Gen. von Brauchitsch from command, making him a scapegoat for having failed to take Moscow.

Gen. Erich von Manstein leads his 11th Army southward into the Crimea, captures more than 430,000 prisoners, and by November 16 has taken all of the peninsula except for Sevastapol (see 1942), but by December the Wehrmacht is fighting 360 Soviet divisions when it had anticipated fighting fewer than 200. Gen. Ivan Stepanovich Konev, 43, defeats German tank expert Gen. Heinz Guderian as he approaches Moscow in December, staging a planned retreat of troops in the center of his line, luring the Germans into pursuit, and then bringing his flanks to bear, closing a trap on the German tanks. The Red Army recaptures Rostov in the south and by December 12 has retaken more than 400 townships, but the retreating Germans destroy churches, homes, and cultural treasures (including the homes of Chekhov and Tchaikovsky) before they leave.

President Roosevelt issues an order September 11 that German or Italian vessels sighted in U.S. waters are to be attacked immediately. Isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh draws widespread criticism by giving a speech at Des Moines September 11 in which he accuses the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt administration of trying to drag America into the European war: "The leaders of both the British and Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war . . . A few far-sighted Jewish people . . . stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government."

U.S. Supreme Court justice James C. McReynolds resigns February 1 on the eve of his 78th birthday, having alienated his colleagues with his overt anti-Semitism, racial bigotry, and extreme right-wing positions.

Former cabinet member and U.S. senator William G. McAdoo dies at Washington, D.C., February 1 at age 77; former U.S. Supreme Court justice Willis Van Devanter of a coronary occlusion at Washington February 8 at age 81; former Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis at Washington October 5 at age 84.

A German U-boat torpedoes the U.S. destroyer Kearny off Iceland October 17; a U-boat sinks the U.S. destroyer Reuben James in the North Atlantic October 31 with a loss of 100 lives. Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1939 November 17 by permitting merchant vessels to arm themselves and carry cargoes to belligerent ports.

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Pearl Harbor drew America into the war, exploding isolationist sentiment as perhaps nothing else could have done.

Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu comes under attack Sunday morning, December 7 (December 8, Tokyo time) as six Japanese carriers launch 360 planes led by Mitsuo Fuchida, 38. Japan's Purple Code was deciphered last year by cryptologists William F. (Frederick) Friedman, 53, Frank B. (Byron) Rowlett, 33, and others, but officials at the U.S. naval base have not been alerted to the Imperial Navy's plans. Japanese bombs and torpedoes cripple the U.S. Pacific fleet, sinking the battleships U.S.S. Arizona, Oklahoma, California, Nevada, and West Virginia, damaging three other battleships, inflicting major damage on three cruisers and three destroyers, destroying 200 U.S. planes, and killing 2,344 men (the Japanese lose only 29 planes). The American public hears only that the U.S.S. Arizona has been sunk and the Oklahoma capsized (a 1,760-pound bomb hits the Arizona, which goes down with 1,177 men trapped forever inside; some 400 men are trapped inside the Oklahoma but 30 of them are rescued). The attack on Pearl Harbor has come without a declaration of war, begins at 7:50 a.m. Honolulu time (1:20 p.m. in Washington), and continues for 2 hours. It is only at 9 p.m. Washington time that the Japanese foreign minister advises the U.S. Embassy at Tokyo that a state of war exists between the United States and Japan. "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant," says Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, 57, who has planned the attack with naval chief of staff Admiral Osami Nagano, 61. U.S. authorities at Pearl Harbor did not trust the signals from radar equipment that detected the presence of the Japanese carriers and aircraft. (Conspiracy theorists will suggest that President Roosevelt and the U.S. military had advance knowledge of the Japanese attack but did not alert Pearl Harbor because they wanted a casus belli; of course even an abortive attack on the naval base would have provided such a provocation.) All three Pacific-based U.S. aircraft carriers are at sea December 7; none is hit, and although all but two of the eight battleships hit at Pearl Harbor will be repaired and returned to service, carriers will prove more important than battleships in the Pacific War.

December 7 is "a date which will live in infamy," says President Roosevelt in an address to Congress December 8. The Senate votes 82 to 0 for a declaration of war on Japan, the House votes 388 to 1 for war; Jeanette Rankin, now 61, voices the lone dissent: "As a woman I can't go to war," she will say, "and I refuse to send anyone else." President Roosevelt signs the declaration at 4:10 p.m.

Australia's prime minister John Curtin, 56, declares, "I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free from any pangs about our traditional links of friendship to Britain." Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies, now 46, has resigned after 2 years in office, Country Party leader Arthur W. (William) Fadden, 46, has succeeded him for 5 weeks, and Labor Party leader Curtin has become prime minister and minister for defense.

Japan declares war on Britain as well as on the United States and proceeds with a plan to attack Singapore from the rear. Japanese forces land in Malaya and Thailand December 8. Former Siamese king Phra Pokklao (Prajadhipok, or Rama VII) has died in exile at Cranleigh, Surrey, May 30 at age 47. The Japanese request the right of passage through Thailand to facilitate their attack on Singpore, and after Thai forces have put up a brief fight the dictator Luang Phibunsongkhram orders them to lay down their arms. Bangkok and Tokyo sign a treaty of alliance (see 1942).

Japanese combat pilot Saburo Sakai, 25, shoots down a U.S. P-40 in the Philippines December 8 and will down a B-17 bomber in late January of next year (see 1945).

Chinese communists and nationalists end the uneasy period of cooperation against the Japanese that has existed since 1937. The New 4th Army general Ye Ting is arrested in January while visiting Nationalist headquarters; his 100,000-man New 4th Army is ambushed; 9,000 men are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner; and Ye himself will be held prisoner until 1946. The Japanese have spread fleas infected with bubonic plague in China's Suiyuan and Nighsia provinces, causing serious epidemics (see 1940); they have done so again in Shansi province, and dropped cholera, dysentery, and typhoid cultures into ponds and wells in Zhejiang province but have halted the program because so many of their own troops have fallen ill and 1,700 have died.

The League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh) is organized with the aim of seeking independence from France (see Korea, 1919; Ho Chih Minh, 1942).

Japanese torpedoes sink H.M.S. Prince of Wales and H.M.S. Repulse off the Malayan coast December 9 as they approach Singapore. Rescuers save 80 percent of the people on Prince of Wales.

Japanese forces land on Luzon in the Philippines December 10, and some 80,000 to 100,000 troops are landed at the Gulf of Lingayen December 22 for a major invasion. President Quezon has been reelected but has contracted tuberculosis (see 1942).

Japanese forces take Guam in the Marianas December 11.

Germany declares war on the United States December 11, thus making it possible for President Roosevelt to end U.S. neutrality in the European war. Italy echoes the German declaration, and Congress declares war on Germany and Italy. Romania declares war on the United States December 12; Bulgaria follows suit December 13 (Britain has declared war on Finland, Hungary, and Romania December 8).

President Roosevelt makes Ohio-born Rear Admiral Ernest J. (Joseph) King, 63, commander in chief of the combined U.S. Atlantic and Pacific fleets December 21 with the rank of full admiral. He has given Texas-born Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, 56, command of the Pacific Fleet December 17, reporting to Admiral King, who took the president to Newfoundland on the cruiser Augusta for his Atlantic Charter conference with Prime Minister Churchill and is highly regarded as a naval strategist. Nimitz succeeds Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, 59, who has been relieved of his command, as has Lieut. Gen. Walter C. Short; both are held responsible for being caught unprepared by the surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

The Seabees (CBs, or construction batallions) established within weeks of the attack on Pearl Harbor will build airstrips, floating drydocks, Quonset huts, and other installations on 300 Pacific islands in the next few years, often in the midst of combat. U.S. Navy engineer Admiral Ben Moreel, 55, chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, and his assistants Admiral Lewis B. Combs, 46, and Admiral E. Jack Spaulding, 55, have spent 4 years planning the mobile construction force; starting from a base at Quonset Point, R.I., they will head a group of hastily-drafted civilian engineers, whose average age at first will be 37; the group will grow to number 10,000 officers and more than 325,000 men.

Wake Island in the central Pacific falls to the Japanese December 23 after 15 days of aerial and naval bombardment that began with an attack by 36 bombers just a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The island's half-completed air and submarine facilities fall into Japanese hands, and 1,616 Americans are captured (most are removed to China and Japan) (see 1945).

Japanese forces take Hong Kong December 25.

Venezuela's dictator Eleazar López Conteras steps down after 6 years in office and is succeeded by Gen. Isais Medina Angarita, who will rule until 1945, continuing his predecessor's development programs but restoring some political liberties.

President Roosevelt appoints former Columbia University economics professor Rexford Guy Tugwell governor of Puerto Rico (see 1940). Now 49, Tugwell has earlier in the year accepted appointment as chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico; he will work with Muñoz Marín in the next 5 years to improve the island's economic and social conditions, and although his policies will bring him into conflict with its rich sugar planters Puerto Rico's income will triple in the next 10 years (see 1947). The president has sent Hollywood actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. on an 11-week good-will and intelligence gathering mission early in the year to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru amid concerns that the Axis powers were subverting Latin American governments (see Rio conference, 1942).